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Analysis show party leaders visiting GTA early, often in election year

A close look at leaders’ travel schedules shows dozens of visits to Toronto and surrounding communities, where the parties are in tight competition.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper (second from left, middle row) had 17 public events in Toronto and surrounding communities in the first four months of the year, but he also made time to attend a playoff hockey game in Winnipeg in April. (MICHAEL GOULDING / The Associated Press file photo)

Based on their public events over the past four months, you’re practically tripping over them.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, and Green Party Leader Elizabeth May combined for 91 public events in Ontario between January 1 and April 30. The majority of those events were held in the vote-rich GTA, a Star analysis of their schedules shows.

Harper alone made 17 stops in Toronto and its surrounding communities, including Mississauga, Scarborough, Richmond Hill, Brampton, and Alliston.

Mulcair had an even greater focus on the province, with 31 of his 58 public events held in Ontario, and 17 in Toronto proper. Mulcair visited Brampton, Mississauga, and Scarborough a total of eight times over four months. Trudeau, meanwhile, largely stayed away from the city and focused on surrounding areas including Mississauga and Oakville.

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Leaders’ publicly-announced events are an incomplete picture of their targets and travels — private meetings and party fundraisers can happen without the general public’s awareness. But when you crunch the numbers on the first four months of an election year, some patterns emerge.

First: yes, GTA, you’re going to be the centre of attention. You too, Quebec, where the NDP are trying to shore up their historic 2011 breakthrough — and the Conservatives look to pick up seats in the Quebec City region. And expect to see a lot of Harper and Mulcair, if you’re in British Columbia, and a lot of May, if you’re in the Gulf Islands.

“I would suspect, at the end of the election, this sort of analysis will still hold true. You will still see Mr. Mulcair spending a lot of time in British Columbia and Ontario, you’ll definitely see Mr. Harper spending a lot of time in similar places,” said Ian Capstick, a former NDP strategist and the managing partner of MediaStyle in Ottawa.

“The Trudeau trips will actually start to tell the tale, I think, where the Liberals think that they’re actually going to do well.”

Second, each leader seems to have a preferred style of event. Over the first four months of the year, the prime minister has held 16 events where the primary activity was participating in a photo-op. Of the four party leaders, Harper is the least likely to hold an event where the primary activity is responding to questions from media — he’s only held one so far in 2015, and taken questions five times after delivering an announcement or speech.

He also attends the most hockey games out of any leader, hands down.

Mulcair has also held his fair share of photo-ops (15), but they’re more likely to include answering questions from the media, which he’s done 15 times beyond his weekly news conferences.

Trudeau, meanwhile, has participated in a wider variety of public events, spreading out his appearances among speeches (nine), rallies (eight), photo-ops (seven), and general community events (six). Trudeau tends to be the hardest to track, however — often he’ll attend an event without notifying the national press, who find out about them after the fact through the work of his official photographer.

May, fittingly enough for the democracy-promoting Green leader, holds more town halls, riding tours, and “meet your MP” events than the other three combined. But her efforts have been largely focused on Saanich-Gulf Islands, the riding that made her the first Green MP elected to the House of Commons in 2011.

“All leaders know that you can’t win votes from the floor of the House of Commons. Politics is retail,” said Amanda Alvaro, Liberal strategist with Narrative PR in Toronto. “So it requires leaders to be on the ground, meeting people, reaching out, locking up the votes.”

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